Linux in Government: Linux Desktop Reviews, Part 6 - Ubuntu

In less than a year, this free Linux distribution has become the most popular.

Where Does Ubuntu Fit?

In the United States, Ubuntu fits what some self-appointed gurus call
the hobbyist market. Those of us familiar with Linux find Ubuntu an
acceptable, refreshing and long-awaited version of our favorite operating
system. It's not a clone of Microsoft Windows, so users do not see fancy
splash screens on boot-up. Instead, users see Linux booting up. Users also
find a cleverly modified desktop that uses native GNOME icons and toolbars. It
fits Linux guys needs and preferences like a glove.

In addition, Ubuntu works in the home market, where it fits in with other
operating systems, including Mac and Windows. Experienced
Linux users should find that Ubuntu also is a nice fit for laptops, especially older
ones. You can bring your laptop home and become part of the home network
with wireless or wired connectivity.

If you have a Linux system administrator or a contractor on staff,
Ubuntu also works in small- to medium-sized business environments. Municipal
governments, schools, government-sponsored agencies, call centers and so
on should find Ubuntu to be a suitable platform. This distribution provides
large repositories of applications for users to download. The developers
thoughtfully gave Ubuntu the advantage of having to turn on the repositories.

Figure 1. Configuring the Synaptic Package
Manager

With Ubuntu, the package manager restricts access to two large
repositories, Universe and Multiverse. In Figure 1, you can see that the
restricted repositories can be added easily by the administrator. One
simply checks the boxes to the left of the Community Maintained and
Non-Free selections. Otherwise, the user has a limit on the applications
available to him or her.

In Figure 2, you can see a screenshot of the Add/Remove Programs (the Synaptic
Package Manager) the user sees if Universe and Multiverse have not become
part of the users choices.

Overall, the restrictions on a user's ability to download programs gives more
control to the system administrator.

For users who install and configure their own Ubuntu workstations,
they can access configuration tools by setting up the administrator's
password. This provides a compromise for the consumer market and the
enterprise.

Now, let's continue our discussion of where Ubuntu fits. In addition to
the markets discussed above, Ubuntu fits enterprises in emerging nations
around the globe. The global market should have less of a knee-jerk reaction
to the African name of the distribution than some Americans might have.

Eventually, Ubuntu should appeal to the market segment beyond the
innovator/early adopter class we discussed in Part 5 (see Resources) and
also appeal to mainstream users in the US. If a company called Yahoo can
gain acceptance in the starched-shirt world of Wall Street, Ubuntu
likewise can become acceptable to a vast number of users looking for a
fun Linux distribution.

My Thoughts

A friend suggested Ubuntu to me several months ago at a Linux users
group (LUG) meeting. I did not take advantage of the opportunity to try
the distribution at that time. However, I did listen to my friend's
description of Ubuntu, and based on his enthusiastic manner of speaking,
I later downloaded and tried it.

The Ubuntu distribution uses Debian as its base, as does Xandros and
Linspire. Debian-based distributions have not impressed me in the
past. However, Ubuntu combines the stability of Debian with the leading-edge
features of RPM-based distributions such as JDS, Red Hat and SUSE.
Therefore, I see Ubuntu as the best of both worlds.

I put the distribution through some tough tests and found that I had to
do less customizing with this desktop than any of the others I have
tested. Figure 3 is a screenshot of
CrossOver
Office 4.2 installing a Win32 application I find useful.

Figure 3. Installing WinSCP with Codeweavers CrossOver
Office 4.2

The installation of CrossOver Office went smoothly. I installed it from
the command line with a simple dpkg -i command,
after which the Crossover menu came up without a problem.

Although I have access to any pricey distribution I want, I have started using Ubuntu
as my standard desktop. I installed
Skype and several other programs I
use regularly. Overall, this distro performs well.

Part of my work day involves using a Linux desktop as a window manager
on which I can open multiple terminals and use the command line. Ubuntu
allows me to use multiple desktop workspaces correctly. I can switch
between virtual workspaces without having to see every application open
on the system.

At other times, I use OpenOffice.org's word processor, The GIMP, Evolution
and Firefox. For all of these, Ubuntu opens applications quickly and has
a pleasing look and feel. It fits my needs as writer and author.

As a system administrator, I would deploy and use Ubuntu. Although the
enterprise tools I have written about in past articles are not
yet available for Ubuntu, they will arrive in the near future. Ubuntu's
sponsor,
Canonical Ltd., has the
necessary funding and a history of succeeding quickly and efficiently.

I anticipate that Ubuntu will become the mainstream Linux distribution
globally. As the saying goes, though, only time will tell. However, if
you do your due diligence on the company, the sponsor, the spirit of
innovation and success of the Ubuntu people, you probably will come to the
same conclusion. All the elements have gone into play for rapid success.
As they say in my part of the country, this dog can hunt. In addition,
it can point and win a show or two if need be.

Tom,
Since you're on a role with these articles (I've enjoyed them very much), I suggest you consider looking at Libranet for your evaluation. They just released a new version a few days ago, and judging by the response from the users on the forums, it looks like it might be the ticket.

In addition, they claim on their website, that commercial organizations and educational institutions are using Libranet. Whether there is any truth to those claims is another matter, but an objective evaluation (based on your outlined criteria) can still be made for this promising distribution.

I switched to Ubuntu late last year when I purchase a new machine that came with Fedora Core 3. I had been using a very similar distro called Libranet since I switched off of Redhat when their support model changed. I find this the best distribution for the "knowledgable user" and I'm glad to see it's popularity showing that others agree with me.

Sure Ubuntu has gotten pretty popular in the charts lately, but you didn't consider the bit community behind it. Canonical does employ people to develop Ubuntu, but the larger part of it is the Ubuntu community - volunteers to be exact. For Ubuntu to become mainstream, it needs community acceptance just like what happened to Red Hat before they became commercial...

You can't just ignore the community effort. Canonical/Mark Shuttleworth's funding is a good push, but its not all about money to make it No. 1

We didn't mention Mark or Canonical Ltd. - in fact, the article discusses the community. I haven't seen the kind of excitement Ubuntu has generated in the Linux community for years -- and I have worked in this community for years.

IMHO, when the mainstream Linux distributions went commercial, the excitement in the community seemed to wane. I'm glad to have Ubuntu because of the excitement. I filed my first bug report last weekend and got several emails about it within an hour.

I haven't seen that in a long, long time.

I think we acknowledged the community here. I also don't believe any open source product has enterprise viability without vibrant and supportive community involvement.

Having read several of Shuttleworth's list postings, I feel certain that he would agree with you. Ubuntu has done well in a short time and the members of the Ubuntu community should be proud, as should the developers of the Free Software distributed by Ubuntu. That reminds me, I need to send in my small donation for the wonderful system that they have given me. Thanks, to all you wonderful Free Software people!

Ubuntu looks good in many ways. However, it doesn't seem to include many proactive security defense mechanisms that deal with imperfect applications. Sadly, it doesn't appear that perfect code is available this year, so operating systems need to include mechanisms that detect and counter common vulnerabilities caused by common errors in applications. For example, ExecShield (included in Red Hat's Fedora Core and Enterprise Linux) protects against buffer overflow attacks. Of the 16 secuirty issues published by CVE that were more grave than a denial of service, and for which there was an exploit available, 75% of them were countered ExecShield.
Temporary file races, double-frees, and other security-relevant errors in applications can often be detected and countered by the operating system. I don't think it'd be too hard for Ubuntu to add this, but they should do so for safe use by an Enterprise.

Howdy,
At the risk of being characterized as a self appointed guru, I don't think Ubuntu is quite ready for the Enterprise market, either. It is a real fun little distro and has come along quickly. If they set their sights on the Enterprise market they could be competitors before long. In addition to the proactive defense mechanisms you mention, they need a way to manage and deploy client. They will get there, I bet and it is a nice hobbyist distro for now.
Good day

Thank you for your well regarded remark and suggestion. Also, thank you for the kind way you expressed yourself. I hope everyone will read the link on ExecShield in your post. You passed along extremely valuable information and I hope it doesn't get missed because of the nice manner in which you stated it.

Your review seems to indicate a green light for Ubuntu in the Enterprise. I noted an interesting trend last year in some of the corporations using Linux. There were a number of stories about large companies that had been using Red Hat or other "Enterprise Ready" distros changing to Debian. Having worked at two Linux companies before, I had seen this same migration happen within the engineering staff in both companies. (Even with a policy to use a given distro.)

Having started using HJ Lu's linux floppys years ago (This would be the year 1 B.D. (Before Distributions)) and having migrated through many distros I have ended up using Debian most of the time. I must say it is interesting to note the mind share that all the Debian based distros have when combined.

The fact is that if you have an IT staff that is familiar with Linux you will get more out of a Debian based distro then any other distro and with less effort. (The reverse may be true (in some instances) for newcomers to Unix/Linux.) Thus we see the experienced making the migration.

Ubuntu is an absolutly great addition to the Debian family of distros. They are removing the (small) newcomer learning curve barriers to using Debian.

Having helped a number of people through the learning curve I would highly recommend either Ubuntu or Debian for setting up computer systems to solve real world problems.

I'd also encorage participation in both projects and to say thanks to the Debian and Ubuntu developers.

P.S.
(Debian is fine if you have used Unix before, have good HW knowledge (know what an MBR and boot record are), or have a helper who uses Debian.) In fact there have been instances on some machine that I could not install Red Hat or Madrake but Debian worked fine. That can be the price of trying to simplify for some lowest common denominator. A process that required a little HW knowledge also allows working around minor problems or oddities.

I like Ubuntu and use Kubuntu (KDE version) for some of my systems. I like the philosophy and the Debian roots.
but...
I love Libranet 3.0
It is not free, but has been so well debugged that it will save me money in time not wasted. It uses pure Debian, so all the Debian sources work and has the easiest install I have ever seen in any OS. Everything just works.

You might consider writing a comment like this to the editor rather than as a comment to article. Libranet as a software product is one thing, as an organization it's quite another.

Since I've been reading this series, Tom keeps reiterating that this is about enterprise desktops or distributions capable of providing desktops for the enterprise. He even reiterated it here.

You can go get exact clones of Red Hat Enterprise Linux from a number of places, but that's not the same thing as getting Red Hat's enterprise package. Software is one thing but delivering it to a large organization such as a school district (my case) is a totally different proposition.

I'd go with Ubuntu because it is free, developed with historically underprivileged organizations and countries in mind. You can pass out the disks and it's exciting. My 2 cents.

It was good to see this distro reviewed. It is the best new Linux distro I have seen in the last 2 years, at least. With the Debian hackers they have attracted and the support that Canonical is giving it, I think the author is right when he says:
"I anticipate that Ubuntu will become the mainstream Linux distribution globally"

Hoary has been better than Warty for me, except for some kind of problem in the sound system. I have noticed, when playing videos, that the sound gets out of sync. I did not have that problem with Warty and I do hope they get it resolved.

dito, i have been a linux boy for ~7 years now & have rolled out linux distros on the desktop in 2 enterprises. ubuntu is the best that i have ever seen.

in the last 2 months, i have use, fedora, mandarake, suse, knoppix, pure deb (sarge), kanotix & ubuntu. i'm on the road a lot & in need a distro on my notebook that 1) won't fall over 2) detects all my new hardware & it has to be multi-lingual japanese, chinese, korean, spanish, french, & i don't want to pay a cent for it, though i don't mind paying for service. While there are some bugs in ubuntu, out of the distros I have tried (& I think i have covered most of them) this is the only distro that is delivering a fast, stable, everything working multi-lingual environment for free.

Perhaps you should all take a look at Mepis. (www.mepis.org), it is far easier than Ubuntu to deal with and install.
I used to use Ubuntu, but found that even with Universe enabled, their repository is still a bit limited. Add to that the have added Xorg to the mix and you will find that you don't have a lot of backwards compatibility with the Debian repositories.

I'm impressed with Ubuntu. The small-repository-selection is a red herring. It's a great distribution with a great future.

For those of you who need a proven enterprise solution, why not use the one that's on thousands of machines, x86 and 64, at the top physics research facilities throughout the world (Fermilabs, CERN, Cambridge, Johns-Hopkins, Los Alamos, MIT, the University of Kansas, Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati in Italy, and so many, many more, it's hard to keep track).

Scientific Linux is Red Hat EL4, rewritten from the source, scrutinized by the best programmers in the world, and used by the most important scientists. It is stripped of vendor ID, perfectly legal, has a history that goes back almost a decade, and yet no one knows about it. If ERRATA is needed, that, too, is thoroughly scrutinized before it is sent out into the field.

Scientific Linux will work in any environment Red Hat would, and even better. www.scientificlinux.org. It's a work of art and genius, and in the filed of high-energy physics, if this Linux didn't work, it wouldn't be used.

Yet it is useful to anyone. If you demand stability and security, you will not do better. It will always be there and it will always be free.

I'm impressed with Ubuntu. The small-repository-selection is a red herring. It's a great distribution with a great future.

For those of you who need a proven enterprise solution, why not use the one that's on thousands of machines, x86 and 64, at the top physics research facilities throughout the world (Fermilabs, CERN, Cambridge, Johns-Hopkins, Los Alamos, MIT, the University of Kansas, Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati in Italy, and so many, many more, it's hard to keep track).

Scientific Linux is Red Hat EL4, rewritten from the source, scrutinized by the best programmers in the world, and used by the most important scientists. It is stripped of vendor ID, perfectly legal, has a history that goes back almost a decade, and yet no one knows about it. If ERRATA is needed, that, too, is thoroughly scrutinized before it is sent out into the field.

Scientific Linux will work in any environment Red Hat would, and even better. www.scientificlinux.org. It's a work of art and genius, and in the filed of high-energy physics, if this Linux didn't work, it wouldn't be used.

Yet it is useful to anyone. If you demand stability and security, you will not do better. It will always be there and it will always be free.

I'm impressed with Ubuntu. The small-repository-selection is a red herring. It's a great distribution with a great future.

For those of you who need a proven enterprise solution, why not use the one that's on thousands of machines, x86 and 64, at the top physics research facilities throughout the world (Fermilabs, CERN, Cambridge, Johns-Hopkins, Los Alamos, MIT, the University of Kansas, Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati in Italy, and so many, many more, it's hard to keep track).

Scientific Linux is Red Hat EL4, rewritten from the source, scrutinized by the best programmers in the world, and used by the most important scientists. It is stripped of vendor ID, perfectly legal, has a history that goes back almost a decade, and yet no one knows about it. If ERRATA is needed, that, too, is thoroughly scrutinized before it is sent out into the field.

Scientific Linux will work in any environment Red Hat would, and even better. www.scientificlinux.org. It's a work of art and genius, and in the filed of high-energy physics, if this Linux didn't work, it wouldn't be used.

Yet it is useful to anyone. If you demand stability and security, you will not do better. It will always be there and it will always be free.

The small repository exists by design. Ubuntu users can enable universe and multiverse repositories and obtain the largest set of applications on the planet.

Saying that "Scientific Linux is Red Hat EL4, rewritten from the source, scrutinized by the best programmers in the world, and used by the most important scientists" is a fraudulent statement. It is not Red Hat EL4. Who says its programmers are the "best" in the world?

Whatever value it had, you have tainted it by misrepresentations.

Seasoned Linux professionals would not attempt to suggest RHEL 4 to the general user as it is complicated and requires training.

Although they sound so similar and have similar roots...they are not exactly the same. And the CERN edition of Scientifi Linux is the one that is most deployed in CERN and it's subsequent middleware (SLC) - like LCG and other GRIDs, note that SLC uses apt-get for high level package management ( deps tracking etc. )

Another aspect is: SL is NOT RHEL, so you won't have any RH support whistles, you are on your own.

Those above are great distributions: they give you Enterprise Linux, for free.

but, Ubuntu has nothing to do with them. the moment Ubuntu declares it has an installation selection for enterprise server - then we shall compare them.

By the way, there's a new version of ubuntu already out, 5.10, and thanks to it my laptop (LG LS50A) can suspend to RAM smoothly. I only have to get the driver for SD cards reader, then I can declare it is FULLY supported.